Debate contribution: Budget Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Philip McGuigan on 24 February 2026.

MLA

Mr Philip McGuigan

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

24 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Budget Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5404180

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The Member is absolutely correct. We have decades, if not centuries, of evidence to suggest that the British Government could not care less about the people here. The point that she makes is particularly valid: they seem determined to spend more on military matters than they do on public services. In the here and now, it is important to work together to deliver better outcomes within our current constraints and to push for fair funding for public services. I put on record my thanks and praise to the current Finance Minister, John O'Dowd, and his predecessor, Dr Caoimhe Archibald, for their work in advocating for our Executive in very difficult negotiations with the British Treasury. However, as my party's health spokesperson, I want to be clear: this debate cannot simply be about how much we spend but how well we spend it. In that context, I agree with the comments that were made by Mike Farrar, the Health Department's permanent secretary, when he attended the Health Committee, a couple of weeks ago, on 5 February. He said:

"I do not believe that it is right to keep going back to"

the North's:

"Budget and saying that we need more for health and social care, because, in essence, that would mean taking money away from young families starting out in life, leisure, housing, transport and community cohesion, so we have to do better with the resource that we have ... The answer is not to think that we should argue for more and more funding but to ask how we will realign the funding that we have so that we spend it better."

With an envelope of more than £8·5 billion, there are many avenues by which we could spend the Health budget better to deliver better outcomes for the patient. However, as a start, it is also important to say that a multi-year Budget is an absolute necessity. It will allow us to plan and transform; invest to save; spend the available money much better; and, ultimately, improve patient outcomes. We must have a multi-year Budget. Year-to-year budgeting forces short-term decisions; costs us more in the long run; undermines important actions, such as workforce planning; and delays capital projects. A multi-year settlement would provide certainty; create a space for an important invest-to-save approach, which I mentioned; and allow us to prioritise long-term transformation to reduce our waiting lists, expand our workforce, complete critical capital builds and shift resources towards prevention and community-based care. If we are serious about delivering the neighbourhood model of care, we must be serious about the substantial upfront investment that is required to make it real. We cannot transform our system while funding it on an annual cliff-edge basis. I will highlight specific areas that demand prioritisation from the Health Minister. First, pay. Our health and social care workers and staff have carried our health system through extraordinary pressures. They deserve fair and timely pay awards. That is essential for recruitment, retention and morale. The Minister has indicated that pay will be the first item on the agenda when he receives his budget. That must be the case. We cannot have this scenario that we are in, where staff are getting last year's pay award now and where the promised minimum wage uplift for our social care workers has yet to be delivered. Secondly, I will focus on our cancer and mental health services. The cancer and mental health strategies cannot become aspirational documents, simply gathering dust. I tried to find out how many strategies exist in the Health Department. There are many: there are many good strategies, but we need to implement them, fund them and see them become a reality so that they can have the impact in reality that they have on paper. Both strategies require sustained funding over multiple years if they are to deliver the transformation that has been promised to patients and families. I welcome the Executive's priority in the Programme for Government to tackle waiting lists. That is a key priority — it must be. I also welcome the fact that the Programme for Government's ask has been matched with funding, because you cannot reduce our waiting lists without funding.

Our waiting lists here are too long, but some good work has happened. An additional 200,000 people have had elective treatment as a result of the Executive's prioritisation and additional funding. Whilst more needs to be done, that is a good news story.

Thirdly, I want to see prioritisation within primary care. GP negotiations are ongoing, and there is a clear case for stabilising and strengthening general practice. If we want to reduce pressure on emergency departments and hospital waiting lists, we must invest in primary and community care. Similarly, I want to see core funding issues in community pharmacy dealt with and its needs met. Fourthly, as per my remarks on behalf of the Committee, there is a need for capital investment and spend. Priorities such as the potential Birch Hill mental health facility in my consistency and the maintenance requirements at Holywell demonstrate precisely what "invest to save" means in practice. Delayed maintenance costs more in the long term, financially and clinically. Last week, the Committee was told that, I think, £24 million will need to be spent over the next five years on maintenance alone for Holywell, but we have the potential to build a new, modern facility for those who work in it and the patients who require it. Fit-for-purpose infrastructure is not a luxury; it is fundamental to safe and efficient care. Finally, we must look outward, beyond the Six Counties, to the enormous potential for all-island cooperation in order to deliver better outcomes and better value for money. We have already seen the success of cross-border working in the North West Cancer Centre at Altnagelvin and the children's cardiac surgery unit in Dublin. We should build on those successes and others through initiatives such as an all-island paediatric pathology service, shared specialist treatment pathways and greater cooperation in research, infrastructure and data sharing. Collaboration will reduce duplication, improve expertise and deliver better outcomes for patients across the island. All of that requires prioritisation, transformation, political stability and, in my opinion, an agreed multi-year Budget.

1,041 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:01 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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